Japan to Form Power Device Initiative

Yoshida added, "We intend to gather such information from a broader industry constituency (that goes well beyond chip suppliers) in our open forum at PDEA."

True to the PDEA's founding spirit (with an emphasis on "users" of power devices), an executive from Toyota Technical Development Corp. has become the first chairman of PDEA, according to Yoshida.

Toyota Technical Development Corp. (TTDC) founded in 2006 is essentially a firm that serves as the engineering brains of Toyota Motors Corp.

TTDC provides vehicle design and development services to Toyota, while offering vehicle body, chassis, engine, drive train, hybrid vehicles, fuel cells, electronics, instrumentation systems, IT systems, communication systems, and intellectual property design services. At the PDEA, "We want leading power device users such as TTDC to speak up and share their wish list -- on materials, quality, and supply chain requirements," said Yoshida.

Life and death issues
For power devices and power modules able to meet the high-voltage, high-current requirements, there are no established "testing specifications," for example, Yoshida explained. "We need to put in place a testing procedure, and establish standards and specifications for the way we evaluate power devices, so that users don't have to face testing results that might wildly vary depending on testing equipment."

While these testing procedures are well established for devices used in the consumer electronics market, there is no equivalent for power devices used in vehicles or other high-voltage, high-current infrastructure equipment. "And that could result in... life and death issues," Yoshida cautioned.

The PDEA website makes clear Japanese industry's ambition to lead the global market with home-grown power devices. The PDEA's goal appears to become a third-party catalyst, to fill in the gap in the emerging power devices eco-system.

Although the power module market has been traditionally dominated by Toyota, which manufactures the module internally, there is near-universal involvement among other carmakers and tier-one suppliers in this market. Semiconductor companies are also part of the eco-system and they're moving up the value chain. Infineon, for example, already holds a sizeable market share in the power device pie.

In this light, the PDEA cannot afford to remain an association of Japanese members only. Yoshida agrees. He pointed out that Infineon representatives were invited as speakers in a recent power device seminar.

SiC vs. GaN
Another reason why the power device market is getting hot, with industry associations like PDEA playing a likely role, is that the industry stands at a crossroads -- in terms of its underlying technology for power devices.

As the automotive industry strives to cut the cost of power modules for HEVs and EVs, carmakers, for example, need to weigh two different types of power semiconductors -- SiC and GaN.

SiC Schottky diodes have been around for more than 10 years, with SiC metal-oxide semiconductor field-effect transistors (MOSFET), junction-gate field-effect transistors (JFET), and bipolar junction transistors (BJT) appearing in recent years. In contrast, GaN power semiconductors are just appearing in the market.

According to HIS's April report:

GaN is a wide bandgap material that offers similar performance benefits to SiC but has greater cost-reduction potential. This price/performance advantage is possible because GaN power devices can be grown on silicon substrates that are larger and lower in cost compared to SiC.

Richard Eden, senior market analyst for power semiconductor discretes and modules at IHS, said in a statement:

The key factor determining market growth will be how quickly GaN-on-silicon (Si) devices can achieve price parity and equivalent performance as silicon MOSFETs, insulated-gate bipolar transistors (IGBT) or rectifiers. IHS expects this will be achieved in 2019, driving the GaN power market to pass the $1 billion mark in 2022.

My guess on why this took so long is that these types of collaborations tend to form after some parties have taken a bit of a lead in the industry. That's very appropriate, I think. But before that, it's more of a free-for-all. The downside is that others may be reluctant to join such a collaboration, leading to secondary or tertiary alliances, which can be counterproductive.

I sincerely hope this effort succeeds in the spirit of advancing the art of power devices for electric vehicles and other applications. This made me wonder: What other initiatives like this would help that cause?

I suspect that the very nature of this "emerging market" has helped build such an industry association as PDEA.

But of course, that "emerging market" thing could be also a double-edge sword. Some companies may see that it's more important to establish their own competitive advantage first, before joining such an industry-wide initiative.

That said, with a big customer like Toyota (who wouldn't want to work with them?), and a testing equipment company like Advantest (who is more or less in a neutral position), the PDEA may be off to a good start. We will keep you posted.

The venerable 12V electrical system is slowly being supplanted by higher-voltage architectures, especially in hybrids and electric cars. Some of those new systems operate at voltages as high as 450V and 600V, enabling the vehicles to run starter-generators, while minimizing the windings in the electric motors that drive the wheels.

This, in a way, nicrely sums up why we need better power devices that meet the higher-voltage higher current requirements.

Germans and Europeans are also good at High Voltage High Current devices and technology. They may have different way to accomplish solutions. Will world have two power device standards - at least for first few years? And will American vendors have third and final converging standard?

@Junko: I suggest Japanese and Germans develops initial draft of two independent novel way of this power initiative. After 06 or 12 months they sholud have joint discussion group to take best of these two efforts and make a new standard. This way consumer will get better future technology.

While Japan and Germany have in past made many high power high voltage devices (the BiPolar era) and they now have III-V experience with making LED's, but there seems to be a reliability issue with high voltage high current GaN except on SiC. Am I wrong about that? Cree stock has skyrocketed this year..the kings of SiC.

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